


a slavefic

by birdbrains



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gender-Neutral Characters, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Past Abuse, Scars, slavefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 09:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21013694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdbrains/pseuds/birdbrains
Summary: A practical person is pleased to acquire a slave who’s very competent and organized, and was also heavily discounted due to trauma. They spend a lot of time cuddling their slave, but they’re just being practical. OR ARE THEY?This is idfic, so we’re not going to challenge the institution of slavery in this vaguely defined dystopian setting. We’re just going to blow this one traumatized slave’s mind with bath bombs.





	a slavefic

I can’t afford to throw money away on a luxury slave—and I wouldn’t, anyway, if I could. And I’d never buy one on credit or a payment plan. I saved the money, and I made an informed choice.

The one I picked was marked down—it was pretty obvious why, but I asked just to be safe. It was hard to believe they’d nearly halve the price just because the slave was experienced and not blindingly young and pretty. They were under thirty, just a bit calloused and sun damaged; slightly hard of hearing, but I can speak up and they can lip read.

“I’ll have to look at your face when you talk sometimes, if there’s background noise,” the slave warned me—as if this was a serious problem. When I nodded, they said, like I hadn’t gotten the picture, “It’ll seem like I’m looking you in the eye.”

“So look me in the eye,” I said. People are idiots.

The dealer wasn’t even trying with me—I don’t think it was me so much as the slave I was looking at. It was like I was rummaging around in the dollar bin. He probably thought he couldn’t make the slave sound any better than they looked.

But they looked and sounded good to me—sturdy, muscular, not from an exercise regimen but because they were used to labor. I asked, “What’s the heaviest thing you can lift?” and they said, “Well, in this room, probably the filing cabinets.” They demonstrated, while the dealer eyeballed us.

It was an easy decision. I’m not very strong and I wanted someone around who was. There are a lot of things I can’t do anymore, and some I never had the patience for. The slave is quite handy—lots of experience and clever enough to figure out new things, too. Not a bad cook—better than me, anyway, though that isn’t saying much—and energetic, and _funny_.

I’m not a highly sexual person, but when the mood struck me the slave would get me off quickly and efficiently. With some encouragement, they stopped being afraid to watch my face for cues. They’d finish me, smile, wipe their mouth, and then wait a minute because I liked running my hands down their shoulders and rubbing their arms. I didn’t think it would be wise to touch them on the side of the head.

I’m not sentimental, but some people deserve my respect—especially slaves, who have to make a whole life out of very little. From the first few minutes talking to my slave at the dealership, I just knew they were special, that I had struck gold in finding them. Driving them home in that stupid harness, buckled into the passenger side, I found myself whistling.

And no, I don’t have a crush on my slave. I just have good judgment. And if my friends would stop saying otherwise I’d appreciate that, because my slave _is_ very smart and talented in every way you could think of. So sue me for being happy about a good deal.

///

I’m insomniac, which I’m done being precious about; I fall asleep a lot better if someone holds me. Once I was reasonably comfortable with my slave in the house I set them up in the alcove in my room, on a mattress—it’s obvious they were never a bedwarmer, and I don’t like anyone in my bed after I fall asleep anyway. They start the night out with me—no sex, just a solid presence again my back with one warm arm thrown over me—and they know how to quietly move to their mattress once I fall asleep.

This wasn’t something I had let myself want. It was likely I’d get a slave who was perfect in every other way, but wasn’t someone I felt safe being held by. I get jittery when I’m half asleep. But this one is just right—strong and gentle, neither too big or too small.

After I moved them into my room, though, I noticed that my slave wouldn’t change in front of me. They kept getting dressed before I woke up, which seemed admirable until I started waking up earlier and they started changing in the bathroom and coming back with a guilty look.

I wasn’t interested in seeing them naked, so I didn’t ask them to strip when I was talking to them at the dealer. The important things about their body were visible with clothes on. But I know enough about slaves to know that they just don’t behave the way my slave was behaving. They’re not private about their bodies because they’ve never been allowed to hide them, especially from their owners.

I didn’t see how my slave could possibly be shy, and I was a little curious about what they thought they were doing. Mostly I was concerned with their insubordination, though. I didn’t have to be personally interested in their body to know that I shouldn’t let them get away with this. It’s in all the manuals.

The third time they came back from changing in the bathroom, I was sitting on the bed watching them. I looked at them and they looked back at me, but when I said, “You’re hiding your body,” they just stood there and blinked. “So what is it?” I said.

“I didn’t catch that.” They were looking right at me, and they were trembling.

I didn’t know what to think about that. Some of the manuals talk about manipulation, but my slave isn’t like that. And what would they have to gain by pretending to be frightened?

For a second I wondered if they were stealing from me and hiding it in their clothes. But the most valuable thing in my house is my slave, if you don’t count my house.

“Come here,” I said. The whole time I hadn’t been able to get angry, just curious. Lying about not being able to hear me was especially strange, but they’d dropped that act by now; they walked over to the bed, slowly, and stood in front of me. “Strip,” I said, feeling somewhat ridiculous; and it seemed even more ridiculous how quickly they were naked once I’d said it. The shirt was first—nothing hidden under there—and then they pushed their pants down and stepped out of them. My first impression was of a lot of red, thick marks on the insides of their thighs—a rash? No, scars—and I hardly had time to process it before they sat down on the bed and spread their legs, displaying the scarring to me in a way that looked practiced.

They set their jaw, not meeting my eyes as I studied the mess of red, ropy scars that spanned their inner thighs—petering out as they reached my slave’s knees, but so thick near the groin that barely any plain skin could be seen.

I didn’t have to wonder about it; I said I’ve never had a slave before, not that I didn’t grow up around slaveowners. I could approximate the whip that had made those marks; I knew it had cut into my slave’s skin and drawn blood, most of the time; I could picture how my slave would have been tied up spreadeagled for these beatings—or, more cruelly, made to keep their legs open through obedience alone, or risk facing something even worse.

My hand was gripping their thigh, just below the scars; my thumb rubbed them absently. Under my hand my slave’s leg trembled. When I looked at their face, their eyes brimmed with tears but their voice was controlled when they said, “It’s undeniable, I’ve lied to and defrauded you. I’ll accept any punishment willingly. I didn’t mean…”

The calm voice faded away. I tried to relax my hold and ended up awkwardly petting my slave’s hip. “What did you lie about?”

“The, the—at the dealership. You didn’t speak to the dealer and I didn’t tell you…” They swallowed. “I thought I could hide it.”

“You didn’t need to hide it. It’s just scars—I didn’t buy you for your skin. It isn’t important.”

They shook their head. Clearly I was missing the point. “No, it’s a…it tells you something about me. Anyone who sees scars like this on a slave would just know—they’d know just from looking at me—”

They looked at me like I was supposed to understand already. 

“My first master said there was something wrong with me—that I never seemed happy to see him. There’s something arrogant and off-putting about me. Like I think I’m too good to be a slave. He tried to teach me my place, but I still annoyed him, and he had to punish me all the time. Eventually he sold me to one of his friends, at a discount, but his friend didn’t like me either. I’m scatterbrained, I don’t listen—“

“You’re not scatterbrained, you’re _deaf_—“

“I wouldn’t be deaf if I didn’t make them hit me so much!” the slave burst out, then added, “I’m sorry for speaking out of turn. That’s another thing I do.”

“I don’t care if you speak out of turn,” I said.

That made them look at me. I moved my hand off their thigh to hold one of their hands, as gently as I could.

“Anyone can see you’ve been mistreated. There’s nothing wrong with you—you’re a good slave.”

They winced like I had sworn. “But my masters—”

“Look, the world is full of foul people. Everyone knows that. And some of those foul people are slaveowners, and you’ve been unlucky enough to be owned by two in a row.” Shyly, I pulled them into my arms, stroking between their shoulder blades, still avoiding their head. “Just real shitheads. You’re the first slave I’ve had, and you couldn’t have made it easier for me to train you and use you. You _do_ listen, because I fucking enunciate. And you haven’t done anything wrong the whole time I’ve had you.”

I was going to pull back, but their face pressed into my shoulder, so I kept petting them. “I will do things wrong,” they said. “You’ll see.”

“Sure, you’ll do things wrong—you’ll make mistakes occasionally, and I’ll correct you. But they won’t be big ones, and I won’t whip you or hit you.”

They sat back and looked at me; their swollen face looked unusually delicate and soft. “How will you correct me, then?”

“I’ll just explain to you how to do it.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

They shook their head slowly. “That can’t be it.”

“That’s it.”

“Well, if you say so.” They shrugged, then looked down, seeming to notice their nakedness for the first time. “Did you want to fuck me?”

“Not unless you like to be fucked, particularly. Do you want that?” When the slave started looking like they expected to find the correct answer written on the wall behind me, I said, “Listen, I can take fucking or leave it. You’ve been brave this morning, showing me your scars and explaining—I’ll give you whatever you ask for. Cake, a new mattress, a new handsaw—you like handsaws, don’t you?”

“I like the old handsaw,” the slave said, “and I…” I waited while they considered their options and finally said, tentatively, “Could I sleep all day? I’ve never gotten to do that, and it would only be once.”

“That’s fine. Go ahead and go back in bed. You can put your clothes back on, of course.”

“_Thank_ you,” they said, and started getting dressed immediately; and I knew I should have suggested that before.

///

We didn’t talk about it for a while. They changed in front of me, but I looked away. Slaves are taught not to talk about themselves, to always bring the conversation back to you, and I wasn’t sure exactly how much of their quietness on the subject was due to their upbringing, and how much was their own preference. I sometimes wanted to make a point of telling them that they _could_ talk about it, if they wanted, but I’m not good at touchy-feely stuff and I thought I would just end up scaring them.

The most I did was pet them, sort of awkwardly and roughly like I was wearing baseball mitts on my hands. I wouldn’t intend to do it, but I’d just see them testing the smoke alarms and fixing the leak and cleaning behind the refrigerator, which I don’t think anyone else in the world has ever done, and I would be overwhelmed by their helpfulness. When I told them to take some time to relax, they would alphabetize my DVDs, and when I tried to stop them they said, “But it’s relaxing.”

At these times I would find myself having to pet them. I still avoided their head but I’d stroke their shoulders, their arms, their legs when they were up on a ladder. The only thing I had ever petted before was a cat. At first my slave looked startled, but then they adjusted to it as they did to everything else. They would even pause and look at me expectantly when I walked by.

One night, they didn’t put pajama pants on but just sat on my bed waiting for me, sitting with their legs spread and knees bent, looking down at their scars. I sat across from them and looked at their scars too. I slowly reached over and put my hand on some of the scars, and even though they didn’t move I could feel the muscles in their inner thigh tense.

“Do they hurt?”

They shook their head quickly. “No. I can always feel them, though.”

“He must have done it in the same place over and over, for it to scar so badly.” They nodded, and I said, “That was a lot of effort to make sure the marks lasted.”

“Yes, he said that if a slave is consistently disappointing they shouldn’t be able to hide it. There should be a physical identifier that they’re defective—disobedient, or incompetent.” They explained this to me like it was the plot of a book.

“It’s not much of an identifier,” I said—I touched their arm with my other hand, trying to mute the sting. “It seems like you could hide them easily, with where they are. It’s not common to strip slaves at the dealership if they’re not being bought for sex, and it’s really just an unlucky coincidence that I had you sleeping in my room.”

“Well, it wasn’t that unlucky—you kept me, and you didn’t punish me in the end.” Before I could respond to that, they went on, “It is a funny concept, though. That’s how he always put it—that my scars were like warning labels, that he didn’t want anyone to be tricked into buying me, thinking they’d ended up with a slave that was decent and wouldn’t need so much correction all the time—“

“You hardly ever need correction.”

My slave smiled. “Well, that’s what you think.” They shrugged, and their face got serious again as they looked down, tentatively brushing their fingers over mine as they rested on the scars. “No, I think it was really for me more than for anyone else. Even if you liked fucking me, you could do it in a way where you wouldn’t have to see them. And even if I’m naked, if I press my legs together the right way you can’t see the worst of it. But I can’t avoid seeing them every day, and I have to think about them even more than that.”

They looked up at me, then—not in the attentive way they watch my mouth sometimes when I talk, but for the opposite reason, to make sure I was attending to them. They squeezed my hand. They dropped their eyes to the scars again.

“I have to know that I’ve been a disappointing slave ever since I was young. That no matter how hard I tried, I was always found wanting and punished, and that it never ends—that even if you think I’m good now, it’s only a matter of time before you see that I’m not very good at all, and I’ll be punished again.”

I started to argue, but they cut me off with another squeeze of my hand. They raised their eyes to mine and looked at me with a quiet, steady stubbornness.

“My second owner’s wife had been in an accident, and she had scarring all over one of her arms. She was really self-conscious about it, and she bought this lotion that makes scars disappear. She didn’t think it would work, but after a month they faded away to almost nothing. And I thought—” They broke off, swallowing.

“Where can we buy it?” I asked.

///

Once we had the lotion, I assumed my slave would disappear into the bathroom with it once or twice a day and I wouldn’t hear anything about it. They needed my help to obtain it and my approval to use it, of course, but once I’d agreed one would think it was a private matter. On the day I came home with it, I left the lotion by their mattress with a list of vaguely alarming side effects that had come in the box (photosensitivity, tingling).

But later that day I found the big tube on my pillow, like a hotel mint. As I stood there holding it and looking at it, the slave appeared beside me.

“I can’t put it on myself,” they said, and then, when I turned to look at them in surprise, “well, of course I _could_. But—well, I thought maybe you would be willing to apply it for me.”

My hands started tingling as if I’d just slathered them in lotion.

“I might need to be restrained so I don’t try to close my legs or get away,” they added.

“I—oh, because you’re always trying to do that,” I said. I can be pretty slow on the uptake.

“Of course—you know me, I kick, I scratch—“

“Yeah, you’re like a wild animal!”

They had to teach me how to do it. We had to use shoelaces, because we didn’t have any rope, but the shoelaces helped me. I think rope would have bothered me to an extent that I wouldn’t have been able to tie them up at all.

It was hard because whenever they gave me a piece of advice they’d say, “And if you don’t want to injure me, you should do it _this_ way”—as if there were two options instead of one.

“Wow, you’ve really never done this before,” they said, once they’d finally talked me through it. They lay backward on my bed with their pants off and the rest of their clothes on (except their boots, which wouldn’t stay on without the laces). Their ankles were tied to the headboard and their arms were free, since I only had a two-poster bed and they only had two shoelaces. Of course they had the upper-body strength to get in my way a little—they could sit up using core strength, throw their arms or torso in front of their thighs—but they couldn’t have done much, and from the way they were lying there it didn’t look like they wanted to do anything.

“Don’t kick me while I’m down,” I said, picking up the lotion from my bedside table. “I’ve never owned any slaves before.”

Before I could clarify what I’d said, they did it for me. “But if you had owned slaves, would you have tied them up?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?”

Their expression—quiet and focused and strangely intimidating—kept me from asking why they wanted to know, why it mattered. I stroked a free hand down the inside of one thigh, from their crotch to their knee, and I felt them tense. They’d laid their hands up above their head and were gripping the comforter.

“Because beating slaves is cruel and unnecessary,” I said. “It’s not an effective way to train them. And if you have to restrain a slave to fuck them—if they can’t even bear to lie still for it—then they probably aren’t suited for fucking and you should accept that. No one’s good at everything.”

Their head popped up.

“Lay your head back down!” I said. This was one thing I knew I was supposed to do if they moved.

“Sorry,” they said. “It’s just—you can touch my face, if you let me see you coming and you move in slowly. If I can see that it’s you.”

“Oh,” I said. I put the lotion down and leaned over them, bracing myself on one hand and using the other to smooth their hair back from their nice forehead.

“Will you really never beat me?”

“I won’t.”

“You won’t scar me?”

“Nope. That’s what we’re getting rid of them for.”

Even though it was the first time they’d asked me these questions, it already felt like a ritual. I was lying across them now, my head tucked on their shoulder, whispering in their ear. Now they said, “What are you going to do with me, then?”

I whispered, “I’m going to use you for housework, conversation, and getting myself off. I might teach you to drive—I hate driving. That’s all. Do you believe me?”

They nodded, wincing a little.

“That’s enough talk, I think,” I said, sitting up. For the next few minutes—was it really only a few minutes?—we didn’t say much of consequence. I rubbed the lotion into their scars, and when I touched them in certain spots—or when it had gone on for a certain length of time—they would start to sit up. I’d lift my hands and say, “No, none of that,” and give them a look until they lied back down.

We did it every night for a month, like the instructions said; then we did it a little longer, because we hadn’t run out of lotion. We started using rope because it was better than shoelaces, and I stopped needing as much help with it. My slave would always ask the same questions, and I would answer them as best I could.

Eventually they lay still and didn’t sit up, but their thighs would still tense, and I’d just move my hands to unaffected areas like their hips or their knees, until they relaxed for me.

Then I would tell them how good and strong they were, how perfect and brave—as if I wasn’t telling them that all the time, with the way I looked at them. But I digress.

///

I sort of hadn’t believed the lotion would work as advertised. There are so many scams out there. I said as much to the slave, and they reminded me it had worked for their master’s wife. “Besides,” they said, “it doesn’t really matter if it doesn’t work.”

This was news to me.

“Being whipped won’t be the last thing that happened to that part of my body,” they said, like it was obvious—and I guess it was.

As it happened, the scars did fade to a pale, fairly flat outline of what they’d once been. By the end of the tube, I don’t think a person would have seen them without looking on purpose.

We looked at them on purpose, though, sitting together on my bed and running our fingertips over the faint, slightly raised remains of the scars. My slave kept saying things like, “You wouldn’t even know why happened, would you?” and, “I almost think the marks look pretty, now—don’t you?”

And I would say things like, “No, I’d have no idea,” and, “Yes, I do think they’re pretty. I like touching them, too.”  
This circular and repetitive conversation went on for an unreasonably long time, until I finally took hold of their face and told them, “Okay, well, you’re a good slave and you have no excuse to think otherwise anymore. That’s that.”

They burst out laughing. “That’s that?”

“Over and done with.”

“Well, all right then.”

I released them and we sat there. In this moment we both realized that I had no reason to regularly tie my slave down, pet them, and tell them how much I liked them.

“Ugh, what is wrong with your ankles?” I exclaimed. “They’re so scaly and dry. Don’t you moisturize?”

They blinked at me. “I wasn’t ever asked to attend to that kind of thing, no.”

“Well, someone should,” I said. “I guess you’re going to tell me you don’t know how to moisturize, right?”

“Oh,” my slave said. “That _is_ true—it’s not appropriate for a slave to do ‘self-care’ things like that. It would really be up to the owner to put moisturizer on the slave if they deem it necessary.”

///

My slave has this way of walking into a completely normal and good-enough room, and seeing nothing but projects. This wall needs to be painted; this appliance is about to wear out and needs to be replaced or repaired. The legs on this chair are uneven—doesn’t that _bother_ you? They’ll find something to fix it.

My house was perfectly fine before my slave. My slave was perfectly fine before me, too, but I’ve begun noticing little things that can be improved upon. They need to condition their hair—it doesn’t feel as soft under my fingers as I would like. They smell fine, but I’d prefer them scented. They could always be a little cleaner, a little more neatly combed and trimmed.

If you want something done well, you have to do it yourself, so I groom them every day, and I bathe them whenever I get a chance. I considered trying all the different flavors of bath bombs, but there’s not much point when the first one we tried smells so good. It’s cheaper to buy in bulk, anyway.

“Be honest—you’d never heard of bath bombs before you bought me,” my slave says. It’s insolent of them but they close their eyes, so they can say they didn’t hear me when I tell them so. “You don’t use conditioner either,” they continue, sinking under the bathwater. “You’re less moisturized than I am.” The water is close to boiling, just the way they like it, and the last thing out of their mouth is a little pleased sigh before they duck their head all the way under.

My friends have opinions. Of course they do. But I don’t think fixing up a slave is any different from scrapbooking or knitting or any of _their_ stupid hobbies. It’s calming. It’s something to do with my hands. And my slave is efficient, which has given me a lot of spare time.


End file.
